This is a building on recipes project but all you really need to do ahead of time is bake your chocolate cake. You will notice in the video this cake is mostly whipped cream with just a small ratio of cake, so I used just a half recipe baked into 1-8" layer If you do not have the excess cake crumbs though, like I did in the freezer~ you may want to bake the entire recipe of chocolate cake so you have some excess to crush up for the garnish